The Forgotten

By Dustin

Calder stood in the middle of the target practice room, waiting for the simulation to begin. There was a loud buzz and the sound of machine gun fire filled the room. Calder quickly jumped back and dove into an ally. The paint-filled bullets colored the floor and the wall as they tracked him. Calder silently counted down. Three, two, one.

The firing stopped as the dummy reloaded the weapon. Calder stepped out of the ally, aimed at a window in the building across the street, and fired three rounds. The all hit the dummy in the chest and it toppled over. Calder proceeded to run down the street. He spotted another dummy in a window bringing the paint gun to bear on him. He snapped off a shot that hit the dummy in the arm. The dummy faltered, giving Calder time to aim and finish it off.

He moved forward again and spotted the red flag that was his goal. He fired five shots to each side of him and the dummies' stands pulled them back behind their various walls and partitions. He dove behind another wall as the firing began again. He leaped to the top of the partition he was behind and from there jumped onto a windowsill as the paint followed him. He shot the dummy that appeared in the window and ducked into the alcove the dummy had occupied. He exchanged shots with the four remaining dummies guarding the flag, then hopped back onto the window sill, and proceeded to move across the face of the building, jumping from sill to sill and still firing down. Reaching the end of the building he jumped down onto the far left dummy and disabled the others with three shots. He quickly grabbed the flag and another buzzer sounded.

Breathing hard, Calder moved back to the front of the room as the computer sounded off his score.

"Time: one minute twenty seconds. Kills: nine out of ten. Accuracy: ninety-six percent."

He groaned. It hadn’t counted the dummy he’d landed on as a kill. He’d have to modify it to say Enemies neutralized.

"Nice shooting," a voice said.

Calder looked up in surprise to see Arys standing there, arms crossed, leaning against a wall.

"Thanks," he said breathlessly.

"What kind of gun is that?" she asked, indicating the weapon still in his hand.

"It’s my own design. Here," he said handing it to her.

She studied it. "It’s heavy," she commented. She took out the magazine and looked at the bullets.

"Yeah. The ammunition doesn’t use an explosive reaction to propel it, so it’s fairly quiet, but it uses a magnetic field generator in the gun, so it’s heavy. The bullets are charged with particle energy. They don’t actually penetrate, so they can be used to stun, kill, as well as blow up things."

"Fascinating," she replied. She replaced the cartridge and handed the gun back to him. He holstered it.

"What’s your best score on this?" he asked.

"I only tried it once. The hardest level it had was too easy. I got a perfect score."

He nodded. "Yeah. That’s why I wrote my own program for it. Care to try it?"

"Maybe sometime," she said.

Calder nodded and reset the simulator. He stepped out of the room and walked towards his cabin. Arys watched him for a moment, than walked the opposite way.

Colonel Une glanced impatiently at the wall clock of the control room. The commando team should have been in the mining base by now. She decided to risk contacting them. She set the signal to only vibrate the leader's comm so she wouldn’t reveal them. She sent the signal and waited. If he had felt it, he would respond when he could.

"This is Lieutenant Jamison," came the call a few seconds later.

"Lieutenant, this is Colonel Une," she replied. "What is your status?"

"I was just about to call you Colonel. We have just infiltrated the base. We expect that we can have the perimeter down in less than an hour."

"Roger that. Deactivate it in exactly one hour. Well be ready," she replied, relieved. He hadn’t used any code, so they hadn’t been captured.

"All Gundam pilots to the main hanger. All command crew to the control room," she said into the intercom.

Calder zipped up his flight suit. He tried not to let his nervousness show as the others got suited up around him. Is wasn’t the first battle he’d had, but it was certainly the biggest. And of coarse, he’d be fighting alongside the best pilots in the solar system.

"Hey Calder," Duos voice said beside him. "How’s it going?"

"Good," he replied. "You know, relaxed. Great in fact. You know, this is probably the best I've felt in..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know. You’re nervous. It’s understandable, being new at this," Duo interrupted.

"And you’re not nervous?"

"Heck no. This is going to be a breeze. You just stick close to me. Actually, never mind. You’ll get in my way."

Calder laughed. "You just stay out of my way and watch me work."

"You mean watch you go Dang it, I thought I made my engines big enough to move this thing. Ahhhh, they’re shooting me! Duo, help me! "

"You wish," Calder replied. He grabbed his helmet and moved to his Gundam. "See ya out there."

"Yeah, see ya."

Calder grabbed the cable and triggered the reel to pull him up to Wraiths spacious cockpit. He sat back in the soft bucket seat and set his helmet to the side. He pressed a few buttons and the Gundam came to life around him.

Systems check Wraith, Calder thought to the Gundam. And indicator panel came up on the screen to his left. Boxes with the names of the systems came up outlined in yellow, then quickly went green.

"This is Calder, all systems are go," he said.

"Roger that. Proceed to the carrier," a technician responded.

Calder unlocked the hydraulic system, then the docking clamps and moved the Gundam ahead. It stepped of the raised alcove with a bang, and turned to the end of the bay where a massive freighter waited. Long ago, the Preventers realized they needed a discreet way to move the Gundams around and had refitted a series of freighters to carry all six (now seven) at once. Calder maneuvered the massive Gundam into the number seven alcove. Minutes later, all the Gundams were loaded. He felt the freighter begin to move and Colonel Une's voice came over his speakers.

"All right, we’ll arrive at the unloading point in twenty minutes. From there, well approach to just outside their sensor range. The perimeter will go down shortly after. The Gundams will take out any mobile dolls they have operating and try to neutralize any manned suits without killing the pilots. We will then proceed to board the base and make arrests. I wont go into the political details, so just do your job, and we should get some people."

"Amen," Duo said.

Twenty minutes later, the freighter came to a complete stop. Heero in the Wing Zero simply stepped out of the open doors and used thrusters to move away. Following were Duo, then Trowa, Quatre, Wufei, Arys, and finally Calder. As soon as Calder was clear of the freighter, he toggled a button and Wraith transformed to flight mode. The freighter began to move off and Quatre's voice came over the speakers.

"All right, well go in a wedge formation with me at point. Calder, take the far right of me, Trowa on the far left. The rest fill the gaps."

There was a chorus of Rogers and the Gundams moved into position.

"Okay, move out," Quatre ordered and began to move Sandrock forward. Calder matched velocity and kept the same distance between him and the Altron beside him. The squadron gained speed rapidly. Calder checked the relative ground speed. 450,000 kilometers per hour and climbing. When they settled at their cruising speed of 800,000 kph, they would be just six minutes away from the mining base. The perimeter was scheduled to go down right as they arrived.

Right on time, Colonel Unes voice came over the comm. "Perimeter will be down in thirty seconds. Ten seconds. Five... four... three... two... one..."

"Now!" Quatre said.

Calder slammed his throttle to full and the squadron leapt forward. Duo laughed insanely. "Hey, Calder, you’re actually keeping up!"

Calder grinned. "Yeah, baby!"

The defense perimeter appeared in front of them and began getting rapidly larger.

"Fire!" Quatre shouted.

Calder deployed his plasma cannons and shoulder Vulcan's, the only weapons he could use in flight mode, and fired them. The swirling blue streaks of plasma tore into a beam turret, ripping it apart. The turrets didn’t return fire.

"Incoming Vergos," Quatre reported. "They’re all dolls. Break formation and attack."

Calder banked the Gundam to the right and opened fire on the closest dolls. The Vergos all activated their shields, and absorbed the onslaught. Calder continued to fire at a single point on the doll's shield, and defense screen buckled. The bullets and plasma tore into the doll, shredding it.

"No gundanium on the Vergos," he reported, and deployed out of flight mode. He triggered his left beam saber and the plasma gun was quickly replaced. The saber activated its long, white-hot beam. Calder rammed it straight through a Vergos shields, and the doll exploded. He felt a light shudder as machine gun fire pelted off his armor. He turned and surveyed the remaining dolls, then fired his plasma gun, picking off the shield emitters one-by-one. Then he raced forward and cleaved a suit in half. The next doll turned the shield emitters into weapons, connecting them together in pairs to form deadly energy beams. Calder knocked the first two aside with the shield on his right arm, then sliced the next two in half with his saber.

"We have more suits behind the Vergos, unknown type. Twenty of them," Quatre reported. His voice reached a higher pitch. "Energy buildup, everyone break, now!"

Calder threw his Gundam sideways as a thick energy beam flew past him.

"Whoa, that woke me up!" Duo said nervously.

"Get closer to them so they can’t use those beam weapons," Quatre ordered.

"Roger," they replied. Calder quickly finished the last two Vergos and jetted towards the new suits.

"These ones are manned, so try to only disable," Quatre said.

Arys closed on the suits and fired a few experimental shots with her Shiv rifle. The suit raised its shield and the shots barley scratched the surface. "I think these ones have gundanium," she reported.

"Confirmed," Heero said as he slashed at one with his saber. It dodged and pulled out its own saber.

"Trowa, Calder, give us a missile spread," Quatre said. "Everyone, try to get behind them while they’re temporarily blinded."

"Roger," Calder replied. He backed off and deployed the missile launchers.

"Fire," Trowa said.

Calder toggled the switch six times, sending the missiles streaking away. They exploded in front of the enemy suits and Calder moved to get behind them. He spun around and stowed his left beam saber, reaching the hand behind his shield and pulling out the heat whip. His sensors picked up a suit directly in front of him with its back turned. He flicked the whip out and it wrapped around the beam cannon, pulling it from the mobile suits grasp, then drove in with his right saber, puncturing the suits engine. They exploded, sending the suit spinning out of control, disabled.

Calder turned to the next suit, which had recovered and faced him. It activated a beam saber.

"Oh, wow, you got one of those. Well I have two," Calder said to himself. He let the whip be reeled back onto the shield and activated the left saber and drove in. The enemy pilot blocked one saber with his, and the other with his shield. Calder spun the suit around and brought the sharp spike in his knee into the other suits engines, then slashed off the head, leaving it blind and immobile.

His sensors registered another energy buildup behind him and he quickly moved to the side, dragging the disabled suit with him. The energy beam swept past.

"Idiot would have hit his own guy," Calder muttered, discarding the first suit and turning to the one that just fired. It prepared to fire again, but Calder beat it to the punch. He switched to both plasma guns, activated all his machine guns and fired. The terrorist suit tried to dodge, but Calder tracked him easily. The gundanium alloy protected the suit from exploding, but it was left unable to move, its hydraulic system destroyed.

"All enemy mobile suits disabled," Quatre said a few seconds later. "Regroup."

Calder moved up to his position and looked at the debris field around them. He whistled.
"Man, you guys sure know how to crash a party," he said lightly.

"This is nothing," Duo responded. "You should have seen us in the Eve War. I wonder why no one invites us to parties anyway?"

"Okay guys, lets get to patrolling," Quatre said. "Go ahead and destroy the rest of the defense perimeter and watch out for reinforcements."

Calder went back into flight mode and began systematically wiping out the defense platforms. No more enemy suits appeared.

An assault transport approached the station with Colonel Une aboard. She nodded to the communications officer who punched a button.

"Attention mining facility. You are conducting illegal mining operations and are in possession or illegal arms. Cease all operations immediately and prepare to be..."

"Colonel, massive energy build up from within the station!" an officer exclaimed.

She whirled and opened a channel to the Gundams. "Everyone, get out of here! They’re going to self-destruct!"

Transport turned quickly around and fired its engines. A few seconds later the station, and every mobile suit still intact exploded. The shock wave threw the crew of the transport to the deck and sent it spinning out of control. Une climbed to her feet and activated the stabilization thrusters. She started grimly at the subsiding fireball. "Everyone report back to the freighter."